Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 144 - Strange Fish

VIP免费
2024-12-23 0 0 371.64KB 76 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
STRANGE FISH
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
? Chapter XIV
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I
THE fat man lifted his hat off his bald head and said, “Oh, pardon me. I'm so sorry, Miss Stevens!”
Paris Stevens was often recognized by people she hadn't the slightest recollection of having seen before,
so she thought nothing of it. The fat man had bumped into her. He'd apologized. She didn't know him.
That was all. Paris gave him a briefly impersonal smile, and skipped on her way.
Skipping was only figurative. It described how she felt. She felt fine, fresh and bright as a daisy in the
springtime. It was a wonderful morning. It was a wonderful improvement over hospitals.
She had a new hat, too. It was in the box she carried, a zany of a hat. She'd paid over fifty dollars for it.
Her limousine was waiting at the curb. The car wasn't exactly a block long, but it was the nearest thing to
it you could get these days. The chauffeur wore gray-green livery. Paris got in. “Home, Abner,” she said
deliciously.
Paris leaned back luxuriously—and a funny thing happened. She remembered the fat man. She
remembered his large, round, somewhat cheese-colored face, and his large round moist eyes. The eyes
were as expressionless as ripe plums resting in a gravy bowl. Something—perhaps it was the
eyes—made the cold-footed ants go up and down Paris' spine.
Bless us to Betsy, what's gotten into me, Paris wondered. I didn't know Fatty. I never saw him before.
He's nothing in my life.
The limousine rolled up Fifth Avenue. People on the sidewalks craned their necks to look at the
limousine, because such cars were not often seen these days. Some of them said excitedly that there went
Paris Stevens. One acquaintance waved at Paris. Gonnerman, the cop at the corner of Fifty-seventh,
gave her a grin and a salute.
Golly, it's good to be home, Paris thought. It's good to be home and have a few million dollars and have
the cop at the corner of Fifty-seventh wave at you. It's good to be alive, and it's good to have plans, and
it's good to know you're in this good God-blessed wonderful United States.
Paris Stevens was a very beautiful girl. But this wasn't a complete description, because Paris was a
character. She was more interesting than her looks, if that was possible.
Paris was a career girl—after a fashion. She had a ranch in Oklahoma, and the ranch had more oil wells
on it than it had cattle, and she had a perfume business on Madison Avenue which would go back to
booming after the war.
Paris was domineering; she frequently said sharp, clever things before she thought, wouldn't take advice,
and she did not have a high opinion of men in general. She regarded the human male as a form of
bumbling oxen.
She occupied a fabulous Park Avenue duplex, at which the car now stopped.
Abner, the chauffeur, said, “The fat man followed us home.”
“What?”
“I will,” said Abner, “give him a kick in the pants, if you say.”
“You must be mistaken,” Paris said in a puzzled tone.
“No, I ain't,” Abner said. “Take a look. He hopped a cab. It's that yellow Sky-View.”
“I refuse,” said Paris, “to have this beautiful day marred by a fat man.”
She resolved that she would walk into the apartment house without looking back to see whether the fat
man was there in a cab, but her resolution slipped, and she took a peek. He was there. His round cheese
face and moist plum eyes were looking at her.
She couldn't have explained why she shivered.
PARIS slipped out of her mink and gave it to Callahan, her colored maid. She unwrapped the new hat
she'd bought and put the silly thing on her head. It was nice. Of course, Paris thought, the months I went
around wearing WAC headgear may have softened me up a little for a thing like this.
Now, suddenly, she was sure that tears were in her eyes. She leaned back, and let them come. It was so
good, so awfully damn good, to be away from the grim river of destruction and death, and dogged, awful
tiredness that was war. It was so good to feel like crying. She did.
She had been in the WAC about a year and a half, and despite her marked ability for organization and
telling people what to do in civilian life, she hadn't risen higher than sergeant. She had, however, gotten
across. She was one of the first WAC contingent to land in Africa, and later she was one of the few of
that group who got to England, then into Normandy shortly after the first big strike was made into the
Continent. One day a Junkers came over and dropped a random bomb, and it landed practically exactly
on the roof of the building where Sergeant Paris Stevens was greasing an ambulance. When she got out
of the hospital, they presented her with a medical discharge. That had been yesterday; that is, she had
finally been released from what she hoped was the last hospital, yesterday. She was as good as new. Not
very strong, but all together again.
She perched the hat on top of its box where she could look at it, and bounced down on a chaise-lounge.
She should, she thought, make some plans; and the first plan should be for a vacation.
Actually, she would like to have planned a dozen activities, but the doctor had assured her she had no
more strength than the proverbial cat, and she knew he was right. A vacation, then, was the first thing in
order.
But that needn't come for a day or two. First, she'd go to a theater, a good restaurant, and buy some
more clothes.
That night she went to Viville's, the beautiful restaurant on Park in the Fifties and had onion soup made
the way the French weren't making it these days. People came over to her table. Acquaintances. She had
looked forward to this first night on the town. But somehow nothing seemed to strike sparks.
At the theater later, she had the same feeling. Emptiness. Something lacking. She just didn't feel as if she
belonged to anything.
The play, for instance, didn't take hold of her as it should have. Yet it was a good play; the critics had
said it was good, and she knew excellent theater when she saw it. Nothing was touching her, somehow.
She was not pleased, when she went home before midnight, with her first evening on the town. She
noticed a serious look on Abner's face, but its significance didn't touch her then.
And when she entered her apartment, loneliness immediately took her. It was a forlorn feeling. Callahan,
her colored maid, was out tonight. Callahan had a married sister who lived in Harlem, and Callahan spent
her off nights up there. The loneliness wasn't flimsy; it was uncomfortable. It was a dark mood. It was
worse than a mood. Paris couldn't understand it.
I have, she thought, no relatives. Not a living soul that I can call family. I'm a rather attractive vegetable,
but I'm the only one growing in the patch now. They're all dead.
Good God, what's wrong with me tonight? She dropped down on a chair, and tried to laugh at herself.
Then she had an idea. She picked up one of the telephones—the blue one, which was a direct wire to the
room of Abner, the chauffeur, in the garage annex—and got Abner's hoarse voice.
“Abner,” she said. “Why were you looking so gloomy on the way home?”
Abner hesitated, and when he did answer, she knew he was evading. “I'm sorry if I gave that impression,
Miss Paris,” Abner said. “I'm feeling perfectly all right.”
“Cut that out, Abner!” Paris said. “You haven't been able to fool me in years. Now out with it. What's
eating you?”
Abner sulked for a moment.
“I didn't want to tell you,” he said uneasily, “but I saw that fat man two or three times this evening. I think
he was following you.”
The cold ants suddenly re-traveled Paris' spine. The creepy feeling was so strong that she wondered:
what on earth is eating me?
She knew that Abner was worrying. He was the worrying type. A cranky old biddy. He'd fret all night, if
she didn't ease his mind.
“Don't worry about it,” she said, more lightly than she felt. “Tomorrow, if he's still around, I'll have
Gonnerman or some other nice cop change his line of activity.”
“But what's he following you for?” Abner blurted.
“I haven't the slightest shade of an idea,” Paris said truthfully. “Now quit worrying, and go to sleep.”
“Thank you, Miss Paris. Good night.”
“Good night,” Paris said.
She sat there, analyzing the strange fright that had seized her. This morning she'd felt fine, so it couldn't
have been one of her indigo days. The change had come that afternoon. She had seen the fat man, and
after that things hadn't been the same. The fat man, then, was upsetting her.
It was strange that the fellow should have such an effect on her nerves.
DAYLIGHT was streaking the eastern clouds with flame-colored light when Paris was awakened. It was
a bizarre morning sky, packed with clouds that looked sulky and dramatic. It took Paris some seconds to
begin wondering what had awakened her.
The east wall of her bedroom was all plate glass, the better to see the breathless view of the
Queensborough bridge and the river beyond. But this morning the view seemed composed entirely of the
dark clouds.
Paris decided that Callahan had shown up for work, and had made some small noise that had awakened
her.
“Callahan!” Paris called.
There was no answer, and the stillness seemed to draw her nerves tight. She wished she had had a gun,
but there wasn't one. Guns are not usually kept lying around New York apartments.
Oh, she was dumb! There was a shotgun in the closet with her sports things. She slipped from between
the covers and got the gun, a good 12-gauge skeet weapon. She loaded it. By now she felt a little foolish.
She went to the door, holding the gun casually, convinced now that there was nothing alarming.
The fat man was in her living room.
For Paris, it was an awful start, discovering him. She jumped. Convulsive surprise brought her finger tight
on the skeet gun's trigger. The gun's roar was ear-splitting.
The shot charge hit nowhere near the fat man. It tore a smear of paper off the west wall, scooping off
plaster.
Up straight went the fat man. He had been going through Paris' handbag, the one she had carried last
night. He probably jumped a good two inches off the floor.
He was already running when he hit the floor. He made for the door, head back, eyes first on Paris, then
on the door. He managed, however, to maintain a coldblooded dignity. He didn't seem really scared.
And he seemed furiously angry.
“Stop!” Paris shrieked. “Stop, or I'll shoot!”
He didn't stop.
Paris didn't shoot again.
She pursued the fat man instead. He slammed the first door as soon as he was through it, but didn't lock
it. Paris got it open. The fat man was going across the hall to the front door. He yanked the front door
open and popped out into the long elevator hall.
Callahan, the colored maid, was standing at one of the elevators. Callahan was talking to Roberto, her
boy-friend, who operated the elevator.
“Callahan!” Paris cried. “Stop that fellow!”
The fat man shot past Callahan into the elevator. He grabbed the controls. Roberto said something angry,
shoving him away. The fat man hit Roberto just above the belt buckle, a blow that doubled Roberto on
to the floor.
The elevator disappeared downward, with the fat man's hand on the control.
CALLAHAN stared at Paris, then at the shotgun, then said, “Cut off my head and call me Hitler, Miss
Paris! What on earth is you all doing to that nice Mister Watt.”
“Who?” Paris gasped.
“That nice Mister Ben Watt. Him you was chasing.”
Paris stared at the maid in amazement. “Callahan, you know that guy?”
“Yes'm, I sure do.”
“Who,” Paris demanded, “is he?”
Callahan blinked owlishly. “Why, Missy, isn't he your interior decorator?”
A few questions brought the rest of it out. The man had fooled Callahan. He had told Callahan that Paris
had engaged him to do over her apartment; he had said that Paris had ordered him not to worry her or
bother her with details. Paris was in the hospital at the time. It was a logical story. The man had acted like
an interior decorator. He brought materials, color charts, made sketches.
“How often,” Paris asked, “was he in my apartment?”
“Nearly every day.”
Paris called the police. Within thirty minutes, a police detective was there. Paris had described the fat
man over the telephone, and the detective brought some rogue's gallery pictures. None of the pictures
were of the fat man.
After the detective had gone, Paris fainted. She just lay back and passed out.
She wasn't out long. After she awakened, she lay still, weak and ill, and thought . . . She was just out of
the hospital. She was in no shape to cope with anything violent. She was too weak; she had no spirit for
it.
She thought of her ranch in Oklahoma.
She called Callahan.
“Get me a ticket to Tulsa, Oklahoma,” she directed Callahan.
Chapter II
THE morning sunlight was bright on Tulsa's Union Station, on the Philtower Building, and the other
buildings. Johnny Toms was at the steps when the pullman porter helped Paris off the train.
“How,” said Johnny Toms. His face was expressionless.
“How,” Paris said. Then she laughed. “Heap long time no see you, Chief.”
Johnny Toms grinned a little. But all he said was, “Sure thing.”
He wore moccasins, corduroy trousers, beaded belt, violent plaid shirt. His black hair was long, combed
to look as if there should have been a feather in it. He had a majestic hooked nose and snapping black
eyes.
Paris indicated her bags. “Heap baggage,” she said. “Think you can carry?”
“Ugh,” Johnny Toms said.
Paris wanted to laugh again. Johnny Toms was a fake. He was actually about one-tenth Osage Indian, if
that. But he liked to give the impression that he was a laconic redskin of the old school.
Johnny Toms was tops as an Indian when he was emotionally moved—when he was very pleased, very
sad, or very angry. In his most aroused moments, he practically stopped speaking English.
“How are things on the ranch?” Paris asked.
“So-so.” His dark face was carefully wooden. “Cows got blackleg. Horse crop no good. Cowboys lazy.
Losing money.”
Which meant that the ranch would show a good profit this year.
Paris followed Johnny Toms and her bags out of the station.
Johnny had come for her in his personal car, a mark of honor. It was an awful-looking car. It was painted
red, green and yellow, with Indian designs. It looked like a Navajo blanket with wheels.
Johnny heaved her bags carelessly in the back. He got behind the wheel by stepping over the door. He
didn't bother to open the car door for Paris. He never did. He treated all females as if they were squaws.
“How things in big, dirty city of New York?” he asked.
“So-so,” Paris said.
She remembered the fat man, and shivered. She hadn't been able to put the fellow fully out of her mind.
Johnny Toms tramped on the starter. The engine gave out a series of explosions reminiscent of a 75-mm.
cannon. There was no muffler.
Looking pleased, showing off, Johnny Toms drove up Main Street, over to Boulder, back to Main, back
to Boulder again, deliberately turned around in the middle of the busiest street. Finally he drove, his car
sounding like a battlefield, out of town via the most quiet and dignified residential boulevard.
Johnny Toms looked disappointed. “You sick?”
“Why?”
“You no raise hell,” Johnny Toms said. “You must be puny.”
JOHNNY TOMS, his behavior to the contrary, was not dumb. He had a college degree. Harvard, of all
places. He had presented this as part of his references when he applied for his job four or five years ago.
He had never referred to it again. Whenever he could, he gave the impression that he had never been to
school at all.
But he was sharp, honest and loyal. He had to be sharp to manage the S-slash-S, which was the Stevens
ranch. The ranch produced more than livestock. There was oil. The wells were operated under lease by
different companies. It was Johnny Toms' job to keep an eye on the oil men and see they didn't get away
with anything. It was no job for a baby. Nor for a naive redskin.
But he was certainly an unorthodox fellow.
Paris was eager for the ranch to come in sight. When it did, she got a thrill. It spread over the picturesque
Osage country, the red-oak hills, the flat, lush prairie.
The house was low, rambling, of stone. A picture place, but comfortable looking. It looked like a ranch,
with corrals, branding chutes, bunk-houses. The oil wells were back in the hills, out of sight.
Johnny Toms stopped his god-awful car in the driveway.
“Big Bird!” he screamed.
The screech wasn't necessary. Big Bird, the Osage woman who had charge of the house, was running to
the car already. “Paris, oh Paris darling!” she cried.
Johnny Toms claimed Big Bird was his aunt. This was doubtful. Paris hugged her. Big Bird was
wonderful.
Johnny Toms leaned over the wheel of his car, seemingly asleep. Suddenly he said, “Paris, you scared?”
Paris stared at him. “What gave you such an idea?”
“Ugh. What eyes for?” Johnny Toms said, and drove off toward his cabin.
Big Bird had everything ready in the house. “That Johnny,” she said, “gets worse every day. What kind
of a show did he put on?”
“He took the muffler off his car and drove up and down every street in Tulsa,” Paris said. “It's a wonder
we weren't thrown in jail.”
“Probably had it all fixed up with the police chief,” Big Bird said knowingly. “He's a fake. You know
what? I don't believe be has any Indian blood at all in him.”
“I wouldn't be surprised,” Paris said.
“He's glad to see you.”
“Yes, I could see that,” Paris agreed. “His welcome did me a lot of good. I was feeling pretty low when I
got off the train.”
She went to her room, which was big, many-windowed and gave a picturesque view of the rolling Osage
hill country. The room had a western decorative theme. Guns, blankets, guns, cow brands, hides, guns.
Six-shooters and flintlocks and buffalo guns. Paris stared at the walls. The theme of the place was violent.
Uneasily, Paris changed into slacks. By that time, the wild-and-woolly atmosphere of the room had
frightened her noticeably.
“Big Bird,” she called. “Will you ask Johnny Toms to come back to the house?”
JOHNNY TOMS said almost nothing while Paris was telling him about the fat man. Johnny was plaiting
a horsehair quirt. He gave, seemingly, most of his attention to the quirt.
Paris left out nothing. She was, she realized, relieved to get the story told to someone she trusted. She
discovered it made her feel better to go into great detail, so she did.
After she finished, Johnny Toms was silent. He finished three or four plaits in his quirt.
“No idea who this fat boy is?” he asked.
“He told Callahan his name was Ben Watt.”
“That wouldn't mean it was.”
“Naturally.”
“Sounds mysterious.” Johnny Toms looked at her intently. “Women are liars by nature. Maybe you
forgot and left out some.”
Paris shook her head. “Some day, Johnny, you are going to get married, and your wife is going to beat
you to death. No, I didn't leave out anything.”
“You didn't get in anything in the war?”
Paris grimaced. “In the war, I did what my WAC duties called for. It was thrilling. There was nothing
mysterious. Nothing heroic happened to me. War is mostly waiting. The rest is work, awful unending
work and, sometimes, being afraid. No, Johnny, I didn't get involved in any Mata Hari work, and I
wasn't a spy, and I never saw that fat man before in my life. I'm just a WAC who was in the wrong place
and kept a date with a bomb.”
Johnny Toms eyed her narrowly. “Feel rocky, eh?”
“Oh, I'm not a helpless invalid, but I'll say that I've felt better in my time. Don't get ideas about my health.
My brain, at least, is as healthy as a dog.”
“Oklahoma,” said Johnny, “will be good for you. Oklahoma great place. Will kill or cure you.”
“Why do you think I came here?” Paris said gratefully. “I know I'll get to feeling better. Not that I feel
tough now. I don't. I feel fairly fine, only weak. But I'm scared.”
Johnny Toms made a tossing gesture. “Poof! Throw it away. Forget this fat cookie.”
“That's easier said than done.”
“Nothing to it. You try. Forget fat boy. You left him in New York.”
Johnny Toms went out flourishing the horsehair quirt he was making. Outdoors, he burst into a howling
cowboy song. The one about burying him not on the lone prairie. At the end of each verse, he howled
like a coyote, honked like a goose and imitated a whip-poor-will. The effect was cheering. Paris knew he
was doing it to raise her spirits. She was pleased.
THE wind shifted about six o'clock. There was a bustling little wind storm which a flier would have called
a cold front. Then the wind changed. It came from the north, bringing the smell of crude oil from the wells
beyond the hills.
Paris sprawled in an easy chair on the porch. She grimaced at the oil odor, but not unpleasantly. Oil was
Oklahoma. She didn't know when she dozed off.
Johnny Toms' “Psst!” awakened her. He whispered, “Make like an oyster. No noise.”
Paris sat up. “What is it?”
“What would it take to make you yell?”
“Quite a lot,” Paris said.
“Okay. Don't. Fatty is here.”
Paris stopped breathing for a moment. “Where?”
“I did some broadcasting,” Johnny Toms breathed. “I described the fat boy to the cowhands, then sent
them around to describe him to some other people. They described him to the cowhands on the
Four-Seven, to the cotton farmers in the valley and their colored hired hands, and to the Osage Indians.”
He fell silent. In the corral, two saddle horses got into a biting and kicking affray. They squealed and
slammed their hoofs against each other, against the corral bars. It was a frightening sort of an uproar.
“Fatty,” said Johnny Toms, “is camped on Sugar Creek. He is pretending to be a sport from Tulsa on a
fishing trip.”
“That close!” Paris gasped.
Sugar Creek was not more than two miles over the hills.
“Uh-huh,” Johnny Toms said. “Furthermore, he has been showing too much interest in the ranch here.
With binoculars.”
“But how on earth did he come from New York so quickly.”
“Airplane, maybe.”
Paris shivered. “I don't understand this.”
Johnny Toms had been talking as any young man would talk. It seemed to occur to him that he was out
of character. He became a redskin.
“Heap mystery,” he said. “We go ketchum.”
“You what?”
“Ketchum. Give him works.”
“Kidnapping,” Paris reminded, “is supposed to have a law against it.”
“You object?”
“Not,” said Paris, “in the least.”
“Okay.” Johnny Toms stood up. “We ketchum.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“I'm going along,” Paris said, standing up.
“Nix, you're a squaw,” said Johnny Toms, alarmed.
“I am,” said Paris, “a former member of the Women's Army Corps. I have been shot at. I have been
bombed on. I have seen a thing called an invasion, which included more hell than you will ever see here in
Oklahoma. So count me in.”
“Heap no good,” muttered Johnny Toms. “Should have kept mouth shut.” He walked away. “Come on.
Lucky I saddled horse for you.”
“You fake!” Paris said.
COWBOYS came out of the darkness. They came silently, with expressionless faces. Most of them
were Indians or part Indians, but they were as civilized as anybody.
“Nobody prowling around?” Johnny Toms asked them.
They said there wasn't, apparently.
“Thought we heard somebody,” Johnny Toms told Paris. “That's why I asked you not to make any
noise.”
摘要：

STRANGEFISHADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIII?ChapterXIVScannedandProofedbyTomStephensChapterITHEfatman...

展开>> 收起<<
Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 144 - Strange Fish.pdf

共76页,预览16页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：76 页 大小：371.64KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 76
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注